Always “Under Construction”: The Origins of I-5

There is an entire generation of local residents who have
dealt with construction delays and detours along Pierce County’s stretch of
Interstate 5. It seems fitting since the project’s key milestone occurred in
Tacoma.

Flashback to the days before World War II. There was no
Interstate 5. Travelers either drove north and south along Highway 99, took the
Interurban
streetcar line or they bused between the two anchor cities of the region.
But the state wanted a more direct route, particularly to handle the post-war
boom to the region’s residential areas.

This aerial photograph from 1960 shows the I-5 interchange at South 38th Street. The excavation work was underway, and the bridge over I-5 was complete. The area at the bottom of the image is the future home of the Tacoma Mall. Photo courtesy: Tacoma Public Library

The state legislature took up the matter and approved a plan
for a superhighway along Puget
Sound in 1953 that would have been paid for through tolls. The roadway
would basically widen Highway 99 to four lanes. But it was not to be. Protests
about the possibilities of paying tolls irked businesses and residents, so the
issue landed in court. The Washington State Supreme Court sided with the
anti-tollers in 1956 by saying tolls were unconstitutional. Those plans died
right as President
Dwight Eisenhower championed the National
Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, the largest federal
transportation program in history that would give rise to the nation’s
Interstate system. It was packaged as a project to allow fast deployment of
troops in case the Cold War bubbled over with military actions against
Communism.

The Buralli family had owned the grocery store at the foot of McKinley Hill since 1927. They closed their grocery in 1969 after the neighborhood around the store was razed to make way for I-5. Photo courtesy: Tacoma Public Library/ TNT

Tacoma
was among the first milestones in that effort with the completion of the
first stretch of Interstate 5 in October 1959, just three years after federal
dollars began flowing to roadways around the nation. The ribbon-cutting
ceremony that fall drew 150 elected officials, including Gov. Albert Rosellini
to officially open a section of six-lane road that ran from Gravelly Lake Drive
to 72nd Street. The road cost about $5 million, or about a fifth of the overall
costs of Pierce County’s stretch of I-5.

Work on the
route would run a decade, bisect the cities of Tacoma and Fife at the cost
of neighborhoods and business areas, and also remove the open prairie that
children of the era used as their playground.

A look at the Tacoma Mall by air in 1974 shows that the mall continues to grow thanks to I-5. Photo courtesy: Tacoma Public Library

“Before I-5 and the Tacoma Mall were built, my brother and I
used to build forts in the scotch broom. With the construction of the freeway
and the mall, that activity ceased and we needed new adventures to pursue.
Considering that our dad was the foreman on the JCPenney building, we had great
interest,” David Dickinson said. “The freeway was finished before the
completion of the mall, and traffic was still light on I-5, so we’d hop the
fence on the side of the freeway and go visit the old man. The scotch broom
forts were gone, but running across the freeway was a new adventure that we had
a lot of fun with as young teens.”

Keep in mind that the land for what would become I-5 was
already developed with houses and businesses that had to be bought out as it
cut through Tacoma and Fife. Gone were neighborhood businesses around the
hillside topped by Holy
Rosary Church, which was spared by a curve in I-5 that cut through the
hillside, for example.

This image was taken on September 18, 1963. Easy freeway access and ample free parking would draw thousands to the Tacoma Mall, which would open in October 1965. Photo courtesy: Tacoma Public Library

Work on stretches of I-5 dotted Puget Sound throughout the
late 1950s to the late 1960s. I-5 was less of a single project as it was a
collection of stretches of road creations and expansions that crews would
eventually stitch together. The final stretch locally came on January 31, 1967,
when work on I-5 between Everett and Tacoma ended. The 15-mile strip ran
between Seattle’s Dearborn Street to the Midway area of Kent. The last stretch
of I-5 through the state would come two years later with a four-mile roadway
between Marysville and Everett
opened on May 14, 1969. The road opened up nonstop, automotive traffic
between the Canadian border and northern California.

An “only if” moment during I-5’s construction through Puget
Sound was the ill-fated effort for the project to spend another $16 million to
purchase the right of way along the route to eventually add commuter rail
service. But that effort prompted cries of being too expensive. That added
cost, however, would have saved millions of dollars decades later when Sound Transit’s commuter rail
service began operations in 2000, almost a century before intercity trains
began the first time – back before I-5 construction came to town.

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